A typical British woman spends around a day a week on chores and does 60 per cent more and other unpaid work in the household than a man, a study published by the Office for National Statistics found.

The analysis, based on data gathered by Oxford University, shows that while many men like to show off their culinary expertise for friends, women still spend twice as much time in the kitchen (7.28 hours per week compared with 3.65 for an average man).

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Remarkably, women in the UK spend an average of 2.4 hours per week on laundry alone, with men wading in with just over 23 minutes hanging up the washing or ironing shirts.

Women outwork men across the board from cooking and cleaning to childcare and care for elderly relatives with men only leading the way in “provision of transport”.

But the study shows that women not only provide more unpaid work than in the home than men but that the work they do would be worth more if they were paid for it.

Using comparable market rates, based on examples such as the cost of eating out or hiring a nanny, the study concludes that a typical woman would earn £259.63 per week – or £13,500 on top of their salary – if they were paid for the housework they perform. By contrast a man would only earn £166.63 per week for his efforts.

The difference is not just because women do more overall on the domestic front but that the work they do is also more valuable at market rates. For example the study values childcare at £15.28 per hour compared with driving at £11.24 per hour.

It also analyses housework by income and age, suggesting that working class families are more house-proud than the well off – or simply less able to afford to get someone else to do it.

Someone in a low income household typically does 3.78 hours per week on general housework – not counting specific categories such as cooking and laundry – compared with 3.23 hours per week for someone on a low income.

But a separate study also published by the ONS shows how one group of men at least, do more than their predecessors: new fathers.

For parents whose youngest child is of primary school age, the gender division between high income parents primary care was 40 per cent father and 60 per cent mother, whereas the gender division between low income parents was 20 per cent father to 80 per cent motherONS

Parents today spent less time overall on childcare than their predecessors 15 years ago, from an average of one hour 33 minutes per day to one hour 27 minutes, a figure which combines the average for men and women.

The trend can be seen almost universally when the figures are broken down by the gender of the parent and the age of their children with the notable exception of fathers with children under school age who now spend almost five per cent more time looking after their offspring than those at the turn of the century.

Changing working patterns have also had a major impact on the distribution of childcare especially among those in traditional working class jobs with men taking on significantly more basic care responsibilities than in the past as women spend more time at work.

But even there equality in the domestic sphere appears to be tied firmly to class or income.

The report explains: “In 2015, for parents whose youngest child is at primary school age, the higher the household income the more time fathers spent providing primary care and the less time mothers spent providing primary care.

“This demonstrates a more even balance of primary childcare for parents whose youngest child is of primary school age where the gender division between high income parents primary care was 40 per cent father and 60 per cent mother, whereas the gender division between low income parents was 20 per cent father to 80 per cent mother.”